Following on from my great successes with MIG welding, I decided to try my hand at ARC welding, next. You know, so I can finally build that railway. Now, ARC's a bit different from MIG. For one, it's generally for thicker metal, and for two, it doesn't have that jazzy handle with a roll of magic wire that feeds through it. Nope. Just rigid sticks that go in the grippy bit, which I found out is called the 'stinger' by those in the know.

Just 80 quid on eBay, direct from China, and packaged carefully for the 7000km journey.

In my ignorance, I left a bad review for this welder, when it arrived, as I found the red and black connections to be the wrong way around, which I thought was pretty shabby and darned dangerous. They weren't too pleased with that review, and tried to bribe me to remove it, which I did not. One full refund later, and now, I find out that those connections were actually right. The negative is, indeed, usually for the stinger. But all's well that ends well, and a free welder is a good ending for me. I do have to show you this hilarious welding mask, though, which came with it. I think it would struggle to block the emissions of a small LED, let alone the blinding light of flash-melting steel.

Professional mask included in the deal.

Less effective than sun cream. I don't have total confidence that this is going to save my eyes from blinding flashes.

The gear's actually pretty good and so was the color-coding. This is the [correctly-colored] stinger and its sidekick, the earth cable...

...which connects to the Clamp Of Doom, which was rusty on arrival. Always a good sign.

Now, let's see...

I took my plate from the MIG lesson on page one and embellished the design, somewhat. This was a good way to try running a long line of continuous weld, apparently known as a 'stringer'.

Unlike the MIG, whose wire is constantly being fed through by a motor, these sticks get shorter as you use them, and at a pretty fast rate, too. The angle, therefore, is constantly changing, which can make this a little tricky for the beginner.

Here's a close-up, so you can see the action.

And that's it for today. Ten sticks down and a nice piece of artwork for the mantelpiece.

And when I say mantelpiece, you know very well I mean trash.